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More than 30 now confirmed dead in Papua New Guinea earthquake

01 March 2018 - 12:06
Tom Westbrook

Locals surround a house that was covered by a landslide in the town of Mendi after an earthquake struck Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands in this image taken February 27, 2018. Picture: REUTERS/ FRANCIS AMBROSE

Sydney — The death toll from the strongest earthquake to strike Papua New Guinea’s rugged interior in almost a century had climbed to 31 and would probably rise further, officials said on Thursday, as damage to roads, runways and phone lines slowed relief efforts.

Remote hamlets closest to the epicentre of the 7.5 magnitude quake in the Southern Highlands were buried, killing 13 people, said James Justin, a research officer at the ministry of petroleum and energy in Port Moresby, in an e-mail, citing a two-way radio call from a mission station in the region.

Most of the other confirmed fatalities were in or around the provincial capital of Mendi and the town of Tari, 40km from the epicentre, where aftershocks continue to be felt. People are afraid their homes may yet collapse have been sleeping in their yards.

"Tari is completely shut down," Mark Mendai, head of the district’s Development Authority said by phone.

"All the water tanks have been turned over and at the moment people are suffering a lack of fresh water, all the rivers are dirty," he said. "The runway has some cracks, the district offices are all spoilt, all our roads within Tari are cracked, blocking travelling traffic."

A spokesperson from the country’s national disaster centre said a preliminary damage assessment from the quake, which struck the mountainous Southern Highlands about 560km northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, was still incomplete.

Australia has promised tarpaulins, water purification tablets and water containers, and despatched a military C-130 transport aircraft to assist with aerial surveillance.

That left those injured in villages to the west unable to reach the general hospital, where wards were largely empty except for long-term patients, Wendy Tinaik, assistant to the hospital’s director, said by phone.

Miners, and oil and gas companies were also assessing damage to their infrastructure, including a 700km gas pipeline that connects to a coastal liquefaction plant, but were hampered by bad weather, according to Oil Search.

Quake damage shut the region’s biggest airfield at Komo, built to supply remote Exxon Mobil facilities, though bush airstrips were accessible and Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) evacuated four people to Mt Hagen.

"The majority of the landslides were in what appeared to be largely uninhabited mountainous regions, or at least sporadically inhabited, which was the saving grace through this ongoing instability in the earth," MAF’s Connie-Lou Aebischer said.